Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma reacts during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Villanova in Hartford, Conn., Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013. Connecticut won 76-43. (AP Photo/Fred Beckham)

STORRS -- Two days after proclaiming that the biggest difference in the UConn women’s basketball team over the past two weeks was his patience with his players, Coach Geno Auriemma lost his patience.

As he was trying to prepare the No. 3-ranked Huskies (23-1) for a challenging weekend against the Rutgers defense on Saturday and the Brittney Griner-Odyssey Sims show on Monday, Auriemma let a frustrating day of practice get the better of him on Thursday.

He halted practice 19 minutes early, skipped the tradition practice-ending five-spot layup drill and then laid into the Huskies about their carelessness with the ball and their lack of sincerity with regard to trying to fix the things going wrong right now. He chastised the team for being content with thinking that the team’s flaws were simply going to fix themselves.

“It’s February and we’re still trying to gauge when we make substitutions where our team is,” Auriemma said. “And as we get closer to March you want to make sure that when you make substitutions, when we get people in and out of the lineup, that the productivity doesn’t change that much. And we’re still not there yet. We still have a core group of guys that when they’re on the floor things happen with a certain sense of precision and we get the shot we want and we get the screen set the way we want it. Things happen. But we’re not quite there yet that it can continue like that regardless of what the substitution pattern is.”

Auriemma had collected himself by the time he spoke to the media, spending 10 minutes talking to his assistant coaches after sending the team off to lift weights. Even though the mild frustration he admitted to while speaking with reporters centered around the lack of continuity resulting from substitutions, the team on the floor when he stopped practice prematurely included four starters.

Playing at the time were Bria Hartley, Stefanie Dolson, Kelly Faris and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis along with reserve Breanna Stewart.

The Huskies’ had eight straight possessions resulting in either a turnover or a missed shot against their white-jersey practice team comprised mostly of male practice players before Mosqueda-Lewis hit a jumper and Auriemma stopped practice.

“You always have to kind of take kind of what Coach says and obviously listen to it, embrace it and then respond,’’ Stefanie Dolson said. “We might not have had a great practice today. But tomorrow we’re going to come in and practice just as hard if not harder to prove to him and to respond to what happened today. Today was a tough practice. The guys came out strong and defended us really well and we turned the ball over. So we’ve just got to do a good job tomorrow of making sure at practice we’re taking care of the ball, kind of slowing down our offense and just responding to what challenge Coach gives us.’’

The Huskies weren’t bad all practice. They had moments when they played really well, but they clearly unraveled at the end of practice and tested Auriemma’s patience. In the final drill against the male practice team the Huskies were tied, 27-27, at one point but then trailed, 62-40, when Auriemma got fed up. While practice is structured to make the team fail at times and then fight back, he became frustrated at how easily the team accepted losing on Thursday.

“We always say that they make practice 10 times harder than the games because it’s going to prepare us for those games,” Dolson said. “So practice we know coming into it every day is a tough day. But we’ve just got to come out and be mentally prepared for that and be mentally ready to respond to any challenge that he throws at us.’’

``He definitely opened our eyes a little bit,’’ Jefferson said. ``Basically, we just have to be more consistent. You can’t keep falling off and start practice good and at the end of practice go bad. So you have to be consistent.”

Auriemma said on Saturday after the win over Providence that he understands this team needs more coddling and positive reinforcement than criticism. In fact, he admitted it was a change in his temperament that had been the most positive part of the team’s improvement of late.

“I would say my attitude has been better” Auriemma said. “My approach has been better. I just pretend now that everything is OK. I spent four months harping and bitching and moaning on doing every little thing right, and then I realized two weeks ago, or maybe it was just after the St. John’s game, that if I pretend that everything’s OK, these guys really like that. And then they just play.

“That is what they want from me, so I am giving it to them. That is why we are being so successful. You think I am kidding, but it is the honest to God truth. I am not trying to be a smart ass. I’m not trying to be funny. This particular team does not respond very well to me putting like heavy demands on them to be really, really good every possession. I tried that, it doesn’t work. There is a reason all those shots are going in now. You would be surprised.”

When the shots stopped going in at practice Thursday, the kinder, gentler Geno disappeared, even if just briefly, to demand more.

Bria Hartley said the players can’t accept letting the practice players have their way with them to the point they let a drill or a challenge get the best of them.

“We just have to be better,” Hartley said. “I think we have a pretty good mindset. Coach just reminds us that we always have things to work on. He tries to show us that you can never be satisfied. You always have to strive to get better. Even if you figure something out you have to keep working to see what other things you can improve on.”

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